25th...Paying my respects

Safe as Milk. Four and a half stars.

In recorded form, music is a kind of miracle to me, preserving an immortality, a sound removed and preserved. It is a jolt back to reality when I hear that one of these immortal voices has died.

As I did last year for Lena Horne, I tracked down a CD to pay my respects to Don Van Vliet, alias Captain Beefheart. I'd heard the debut was the best starting point, so I sat down with Safe as Milk expecting something really bizarre....

The opener, Sure 'Nuff 'N Yes I Do, is just mildly eccentric blues-rock (all the songs are really short by the way). I was bemused, but one thing can be said: the Magic Band was fabulous. Captain Beefheart may have had to sack half the assembly, but the end result of such perfectionism is immediately noticeable.

Zig Zag Wanderer continues in the same vein. Here's me thinking, why wasn't this record a hit? That's classic sixties guitar in just two minutes!

Things get even more normal with Call On Me, the lyric helping out. I'm thinking he'd make a great R&B singer....

Then finally! Six minutes into the CD, Dropout Boogie kicks off. The song is drenched in buzziness, yet contains a light and airy bridge. Juxtaposition is genius.

So Glad runs off the rails. I think fast Doo-wop is great stuff, but this is sad, slower than molasses and three minutes long. Also, spare me rhymes of "glad" and "sad."

Back on track with Electricity. Space age theremin, the Captain's voice (it's not pretty, but it sure is different), footstomping infection in the music and enough overlapping structures to insure a long playback span.

"The following tone is a reference tone recorded at out operating level," so says Richard Perry the producer, amongst more space age sounds. Then Yellow Brick Road, which, aside from a hollow, abrasive "chorus," is a delightful little pop tune. Ah, now things are properly strange.

Abba Zaba... Childlike rhymes, faux African textures, appealing melody, musical bridge keeping it from repetitiveness. Enjoyable even while wondering where such a crazy idea came from.

Blues-rock gets another airing on Plastic Factory, only this time it's heavy duty, grubby and worn, just the way it should be.

Where There's Woman is also in the blues framework. He'd have made a great blues singer too. This song's good but not at all odd or out there.

That lapse is fixed with Grown So Ugly, a vaguely amusing tale that's kind of throwaway, but still interesting.

The record is now pegged beyond doubt, you think. Which is why Autumn's Child is at the end to stun you. It's a ballad. Well, recognizably Beefheart, but still a ballad. Works as a prototype to the bleeding heart memories of Tom Waits' ballads. At four minutes, it's the most involved song, ending the record on a high artistic note and using theremin to excellent effect.

Oh, did I mention Ry Cooder's presence on guitar? Well respected name might mean something to the readers, but I don't know him myself.

My first Captain Beefheart record. I like it a lot, but will there be another? You see, it is Safe as Milk's glibness, the lightness of touch despite the perfectionism, that charms me. Does Trout Mask Replica, for instance, retain that? Alas, I do not know.

24th...A reward of grace

Desertshore. Five stars.

There are few records one could classify as entirely unique, but 1970s Desertshore is one of them. Produced by John Cale, Nico again unveils an entire world for you, but it couldn't be further from the coffee house atmosphere of Chelsea Girl. This landscape is windswept, desolate, expansive, European in the shadow of Bach and the troubadours at their most somber.

Nico wrote all her own material at this point and played harmonium. Cale did the rest, and the resulting creation is only 29 minutes, but what a half hour it gives you...

Janitor of Lunacy eases you into Nico's world with waves of sound that could be throwbacks to the era of Visigoths or Teutonic Knights. She still has a technically unlovely voice, but she sings as if from a great distance in time and space.

The Falconer starts with gentle percussion and piano; you can almost see people filing into church. 40 hypnotic seconds later, Nico changes the dynamic. Organ and harmonium wax and wane, the percussion turns ominous. It's Gothic, you understand it and then the gentle piano returns to haunting effect. Is the song a reassuring one? Who is the "falconier?" What mystery is being enacted here?

Mystery is the key to the album, and you won't find a single answer to the lyrical enigmas present. My Only Child is nearly a Capella with choral singing. Sound is used merely to emphasize the "morning/evening" passages.

One minute is then given to her son Ari, singing Le Petit Chevalier. It is hardly long enough to be more than a curiosity, yet it forms a timely break from the Germanic tones and the melody is quite beautiful.

Cale gets out the violin for Abschied, which Nico sings in her native tongue. Controlled turbulence and the avant-garde mixed with melodicism.

Afraid is driven by piano and stately strings. She repeats every line. It isn't at all frightening, unlike Abschied, and comes closest to Chelsea Girl accessibility. A pool of calm in this strange record.

Mutterlein returns to German. In many ways a compound of Janitor, Abschied and My Only Child. Heaviest song, with the continuous tap-tap-tapping that puts me in mind of a death-watch beetle....

All That Is My Own is a fitting coda, with her spoken word prayer standing out. "He who knows/may pass on/the road unknown/and meet me on the desertshore..." There's a chaotic quality that appeals after all the more rigid structures gone before, and a fitting sense of pride; ownership in the strange land she's created.

This is dark and somber, it is true, yet distant. The listener looks on, but is not invited in; denied a sense of familiarity. This music will not make your heart bleed. Nor will you be thinking "oh! those posers! Selling more doom and gloom music...."

Desertshore is simply something else. Transporting, meditative, ahead of its time (1970?) and, considering that I, who usually flit from one rock artist to another, now want to absorb the sounds of Bach, probably mind expanding as well.

23rd...Purists will scoff

September Songs. Four and a half stars.

Another exception to my "no compilations" rule in reviewing, because you won't find half of this material anywhere else, and it's easier to get it here.

To clear the history, this is the soundtrack the music/art film by Larry Weinstein, which was itself inspired by the Hal Wilner 1985 Kurt Weill tribute album Lost in the Stars, which I would love to hear. Wilner also helped construct this tribute album.

Now Kurt Weill was a German composer who also took in the mediums of cabaret, jazz...in a word, popular songs. He collaborated several times with poet/playwright Bertolt Brecht (most notably in the Threepenny Opera), and after settling in America, amazingly, while his music lost radicalism, lyrical quality did not go down.

This overview came out in 1997 and contains (in almost 70 minutes!) a reasonable overview, from traditional versions in German, to modern updated spins that will offend the purists. If you want the real Kurt Weill, go hunt up some Lotte Lenya recordings.

Introductions over, let's look at the songs...

Mack the Knife is the signature song from Threepenny, picked up by Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and others. Funny, since it details the (Many) victims of a murderer. Of course, Nick Cave sings it here, with his usual histrionic aplomb. The backing band is different from the Bad Seeds and supplies demented, woozy brass.

We get PJ Harvey next, doing a standout spin on Brecht's poem Ballad of the Soldier's Wife. The lyric is ingenious, as the soldier sends clothing back from each European city he's encamped at. Her voice and the music carry off the idea with drama and finesse.

David Johansen gets together with some others and runs through Alabama Song. This one's popularity astonishes me. Herky jerky rhythms, lousy lyrics (proof that even poets misfire, and what the hell was he writing about America for anyway?) and on this one, a prissy falsetto girl in backups. I've never the Doors version, but Bowie's was godawful, so I don't hold out much hope.

Youkali Tango is a high class, traditional version. Sung by opera soprano Teresa Stratas, backed only by piano and accordion. Her voice is all that really matters and is suitably incredible.

Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet keep things old-fashioned. Lost in the Stars comes from one of Weill's American musicals, and while it is theatrical, Elvis does a good job with a touching song.

Lotte Lenya hardly pauses for breath, leaps right into Threepenny's Pirate Jenny. I wish I knew German, as this old cabaret tune sounds fascinating.

With that story over, we get a lengthy introduction to the classic Speak Low, courtesy of Charlie Haden's excellent upright bass. Ogden Nash wrote the lyric (how he of nonsense verse managed it, I'll never know), but what a surprise when the piano slowly enters the picture and then an old recording of Kurt Weill himself singing it! His accent as he sings English, the far off, dim sound of the recording and the simple fact of its antiquity drive home the meaning of the song even better than the words.

Returning to The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (from whence came Alabama) we get O Heavenly Salvation, as interpreted by the Persuasions. A Capella, though it hardly registers, as there is nothing missing. Real gospel, singing a hymn of thanks to God.

Betty Carter is one of the few names on the CD I draw a complete blank at. Her Lonely House (from Street Scene, to which Langston Hughes contributed this lyric) is a whopping seven minutes of acute loneliness. Her jazz arrangement and astonishing voice make this one of the most evocative and sad tracks.

Teresa Stratas is favoured with an unnecessary reprise, and picks up the pace with Surabaya Johnny. It comes from a lesser known Weill/Brecht collaboration. She sounds like she's saying goodbye to Johnny, and runs through a bunch of moods with that voice, but also comes across as an actress, taking away sincerity.

From the same piece (Happy End) Mary Margaret O'Hara arranges Furchte dich nicht. It is in English, with free-form jazz and a completely demented vocal. I don't know a thing about this woman, but this one tips straight over into avant-garde.

Emotional finale comes with eight minutes of September Song as done by Lou Reed. A ballad in electric guitar tackling the same heavy theme of "time" as Speak Low, only written by Maxwell Anderson (who wrote Lost in the Stars). Sublime.

Then comes a brief coda: the original, fuzzy recording of Mack the Knife, as sung by Bertolt Brecht himself. Priceless. Even following Lou Reed, is this ever good. Full circle.

The problem of pacing appears at the end. William S. Burroughs reads What Keeps Mankind Alive? It should have followed O'Hara, being avant-garde, as befits a work performed by the Selfhaters Orchestra. Supremely pessimistic (realistic, you might say) and Brecht would probably be pleased to have it as the end, but I just find it off-putting.

Okay, so if Alabama and Surabaya were chopped out, and Burroughs moved to before or after O'Hara, this would be perfect. As is, still an excellent CD, great for a bohemian crowd, great for a fire lit night all alone, great for an introduction to the music of Kurt Weill.